In Defense of Extravagance
Author: Jennifer Holberg, associate professor of EnglishPerspectives
Posted on: Nov 24, 2009
Scrapbooks and cakes, even in superabundance, are perhaps little to show for a life. Yet, they are undeniable witnesses to the heart of the gospel—and one of the scandals of the cross: God’s lavish gesture of love.
Chasing Emily: A Review of ‘Emily’s Ghost’
Author: Jennifer Holberg, Professor of EnglishBooks & Culture online
Posted on: Sep 22, 2009
Emily Brontė hears dead people.
Or at least she does according to the latest entry in the Brontė family literary sweepstakes, Denise Giardina’s Emily’s Ghost. To be fair, Emily only gets all Sixth Sense-y in the beginning and ending sections of Giardina’s novel (somehow, I guess, the otherworldly presences just aren’t as convenient or necessary in the vast middle chapters of the novel). And lest the reader believe that these voices are evidence of schizophrenia or a matter of purely imaginative inner dialogue (the latter a possibility that Anne Brontė raises at one point in the novel), Giardina has her Emily affirm quite forcefully the reality of her auditory companions. What’s more, Giardina’s Emily is ardently and actively political (a Chartist, no less); strongly and nobly rebellious against everything well-established in early Victorian society; and the participant in a passionate, if unconsummated, romance. Throw in a pinch of plot elements taken from Jane Eyre and a dash of Jo March-style hair-chopping, and you begin to get the idea of the portrait of Emily Brontė this book gives us.
Dickens In Mumbai
Author: Roy Anker, professor of EnglishBooks and Culture
Posted on: Mar 9, 2009
When British direct or Danny Boyle hits his mark, no matter the genre, hardly anyone moves a story better.
A book made of scraps: Toni Morrison’s mending
Author: Jane Zwart, professor of EnglishBooks and Culture
Posted on: Feb 17, 2009
Jane Zwart gives a peek into Toni Morrison’s new novel, A Mercy.
On the Launch of The Solzhenitsyn Reader
Author: Ed EricsonIntercollegiate Studies Institute
Posted on: Nov 21, 2008
Listen to the lecture given at the book launch for The Solzhenitsyn Reader: New and Essential Writings, 1947-2005
A Song: Of Aaron
Author: Deborah ReinstraThe Other Journal
Posted on: Nov 21, 2008
And the Lord struck the people with a plague because of what they did with the calf Aaron had made.
Exodus 32:35